Another song I written a few years earlier, but which had not been included on Predator was Cry Havoc, half of a 2 song medley with one Curt had written when we got our first 4-track.

Without his half, I had to come up with the long instrumental intro to fill the song out. I wrote all those parts on bass.

We recorded a test version of all those songs, kept rehearsing, then started recording the final versions.

I was increasingly unhappy with Mark’s commitment to the band and the solos and tracks he was coming up with were less than satisfying, more due to his youth and lack of discipline rather than his talent, which was never in question.

After a few months working on the material while simultaneously trying to put together sets of original and cover tunes for live gigs unsuccessfully, we mutually decided he should leave the band.

Nick Simmons, guitar teacher and classical wizard joined us on the strength of his technical prowess (and our lack of any other decent candidates).

His soloing was interesting and original, but once we started re-recording Mark’s rhythm parts it became apparent Nick didn’t have a metal bone in his body.

I started recording the rhythm guitar myself, when it occurred to me that we would be hopeless live. I talked Mike into joining us as rhythm and 2nd lead guitarist.

He redid all Mark’s and most of Nick’s rhythm parts that I hadn’t already redone, and I played rhythm on Judas.

Massive differences of opinion, a chance to tour Australia to which Nick could not commit, and finally Curt’s return from Alabama led to a parting of the ways with Mssr. Simmons.

I still kept tapes of all his solos, and its interesting to compare them to the way Mark, and finally Curt, approached them.For the third time, we rerecorded most of the guitar parts on the songs.

Curt added some rhythm and redid all the solos that Mike and I weren’t already doing.

By now I was pretty sick of these songs, thankfully Curt is extremely well-prepared any time he enters the studio he always has all his parts carefully constructed and worked out and knows exactly what he wants to do, so the recording was very painless and happy.

Good thing too, because we were still on 8 track 1/2 inch tape, and the quality would surely have suffered with many more overdubs on the same channels.

Listening to it again after not having listened to it for a long time, I’m struck by how good it is for 8 tracks.

The sound is not that bad at all, and there is some really nice guitar work on this album.

There is a major breadth of styles and material here for a metal album.

The intro and solos to Alone and the solo on Judas are some of the highlights I had forgotten.

We rehearsed and finally got out playing live sets from both Malicious Intent and Predator after finishing the album, which by now I was hearing in my sleep, having engineered 5 guitarists (counting me and Mike) worth of recording, as well as most of the same solos in 3 different versions, not to mention countless test mix-downs.

Although we still did some pretty amazing things with the 8-track with stacked vocals and guitars, we had obviously outgrown 8 channels, and the next project had to go to 16 tracks in order to progress.